Hold on Tight
by SabaceanBabe
Summary: Her breath wheezes in and out of overworked lungs and little whimpering noises escape from her throat.


She slips, loses her footing, and her head hits the heavy steel door painfully; stars dance behind her eyes until her vision clears half a second later. Her breath wheezes in and out of overworked lungs and little whimpering noises escape from her throat. The smell of cordite, of burning metal and plastic from the recent firefight is thick in the air, making it even harder to breathe.

The whine of mechanical servos spurs another effort and with a wordless shout Allison pushes against the lever with all her might. A fresh wave of despair shoots through her when the lever refuses to budge, but then it gives. The locking mechanism releases with a clash of metal and the door swings free with such force it rebounds back toward her; she catches it painfully on her outstretched arm.

The lights flicker and then stabilize, but one overhead flares brightly once and in a shower of sparks goes dark. She spins around, startled, but a flash of light on bright metal in the corridor behind her sends her scrambling through the open door. She stumbles again, nearly goes down. Righting herself, she bounces off the opposite wall and continues to run, leading the T-600 further from the group of civilians General Ellison had dispatched them to rescue.

It was supposed to be easy. Take a three-man team into the ruined bunker, get to the emergency shelter deep within, and lead the half dozen people trapped there to safety. It's been three days since the initial attack. Three days since they lost this particular bunker to the metal. Plenty of time for the machines to remove any equipment Skynet might find useful, destroy the rest, and abandon the bunker's remains. The way should have been clear for the search and rescue operation.

They were ambushed.

The damned metal had let them get all the way to the shelter, let them start working their way back to the surface, less cautious than they should have been, lulled into a false sense of security. It waited for them at what had been the central hub, the intersection of the bunker's main tunnels. Allison was in the lead, Kyle Reese right behind her with Sayles bringing up the rear.

There hadn't been any time to plan, only to react. She had run straight for the 600 and dove for its knees. In the few precious seconds it was down, Kyle and Sayles had split the group in two and headed in opposing directions. They hadn't meant to leave her behind. Kyle had grabbed her hand in passing, pulled her to her feet, but she'd tripped over a piece of fallen concrete, once part of the ceiling, her momentum slamming her shoulder and hip into the doorway. Kyle had lost his grip on her hand and her rifle had gone skittering across the hub, coming to a stop past the terminator. Out of reach.

Now she's running for her life: unarmed, terrified, and making embarrassing little mewling noises that she can't seem to stop. At least the metal is still following her, giving the others a chance to escape. Assuming, of course, there's only the one.

She reaches a ladder to the surface; her fear propels her halfway up it in one leap. Shoving the hatch cover to the side, she climbs out, scrabbling for purchase on the debris-laden landscape.

A sob catches in her throat at the sight of two HKs running a criss-cross search pattern over the ruins surrounding the bunker, not very far from where she stands. A clank and groan of fatigued metal from below catches her attention and she realizes the 600 is on the ladder, coming up behind her. She turns, feeling as though everything is moving in slow motion, watches as it climbs up from the hatch, sees it aim an odd-looking gun right at her. Her racing mind notes that the rifle it fired at her before hangs by its side, not a current threat.

Something slams into her from the left, bearing her away from the net that lands in the space where she stood. Before she has a chance to catch her breath, Kyle has her again by the wrist and this time his grip is too hard to accidentally let her go. _My arm'll be bruised all to hell_, she thinks, _if I live that long._ He drags her along with him as she tries to get her feet under her.

Kyle finally comes to a stop behind what was once a subway entrance, back when the bunker was merely one more stop on a major transportation line. It hasn't been used in years, was, in fact, filled in with rubble by the resistance, deemed too dangerous to keep open.

"Where—?" Allison starts to ask in a barely audible whisper, but Kyle holds a finger against his lips and peers around the corner, so she just leans back against the wall and concentrates on breathing quietly. A searchlight tracks across the ground about thirty yards to the right, moving away from their position in roughly the same direction they were headed before Kyle stopped.

A light touch on her wrist brings Allison to her feet and she follows Kyle as he doubles back toward the still open hatch. _What the hell?_ Her trepidation doesn't lessen until he passes the bunker entrance to dash down an alley leading to what was once a parking garage, based on the number of abandoned cars in orderly rows.

Dodging dead vehicles and other debris, Kyle leads her to an elevator shaft in the center of the structure. The doorway gapes wide, nothing but darkness beyond; Allison feels a warm breeze on her sweaty skin, drifting from the opening, its smell dank and musty, stale.

Slinging his rifle over his shoulder, Kyle retains his hold on her hand and steps into the dark opening. There's enough ambient light to see the sharp angle of the top of the elevator compartment about a foot below the opening, all twisted metal and snapped cabling and a deeper darkness in the center.

"We're not going in there," Allison whispers in protest.

Kyle's gaze darts past the shaft, searching for movement, a telltale glint of moonlight on chrome. When he sees nothing, he steps over the threshold, maintaining his hold on her hand. She stares at him. _If he's afraid I'll run, he's not wrong._ The look in his eyes dares her to bolt, so instead, she steps down onto the ruined elevator car. He grins at her, a fleeting sight, there and then gone.

Keeping his voice low, he says, "I'll go down first, you follow right after. Be careful of the edge." With that, he drops through the hole into the elevator car. Allison expects to feel some movement of the car as he lands, but it's wedged so securely into the shaft that there's nothing.

She slides a foot toward the hole, crouching down to maneuver into it feet first. The jagged edge catches at her trousers and she understands why he cautioned her; she'd thought the hole was an access panel already built in, but this closer proximity says that it was torn into the roof by some powerful force.

"Clear," Kyle calls from below, his voice somewhat muffled, and Allison drops through the hole. His hands at her waist steady her when her boots hit the floor, which slants harshly, as though she's landing on some strange hillside.

"Explosion?" she asks, gesturing toward the hole in the ceiling.

He shakes his head. "Metal. One of them punched through it, then tore a bigger hole."

Allison shudders in sympathy for whoever was inside it at the time.

"Let's go." Kyle wedges his fingers into a gap between the elevator doors and pulls them open. Allison's eyes have already adjusted to the deeper darkness inside the dead elevator; she can see now that it's wedged between floors. Kyle slips through the opening and holds out a hand to help her down.

"Back into the bunker?" she asks. Not part of the main bunker, but if she's right about their relative position, they're near one of the unused tunnels.

"Quickest route to our rendezvous point," he confirms. "Should be the safest, too, under the circumstances." Once she passes through the door, he pulls it closed. Allison looks a question at him and he shrugs. "One of the tunnel rats told me about this access point. They're the only ones who used it." Taking her hand again, he pulls her along after him into the darkness; his hand is warm, strong, and she never wants to let go.

They move through total darkness for several minutes, Kyle following whatever path his tunnel rat told him about, fingers trailing along the walls, but then he stops abruptly and Allison runs into him, chest to back. "Sorry," she whispers, the first word either of them has said since they left the elevator shaft. "Why are we stopping?"

"Rock fall."

Slipping to Kyle's side, Allison squints into the darkness past his shoulder. It's then that she notices a cooler breeze coming from straight ahead. She sees a pile of rubble – Kyle's rock fall – that reaches to the ceiling, contrasting with the light that squeezes through tiny gaps where the chunks of rock and concrete aren't so densely packed. There's enough light that she sees it when Kyle glances down at her, grinning.

"Our rendezvous point is on the other side of that," he tells her.

"Seriously? And this makes you happy?" Tons of rock and concrete and steel, and who knows what beyond. She takes a step toward it, kicks something that squeals in protest and skitters off, heading toward the left side of the rock fall. "Rats," she observes with a shudder. "Things just keep getting better and better."

"Show our guide a little respect," Kyle responds. She's pretty sure he's joking.

Allison sighs. "I hate rats," she mutters under her breath.

Kyle reaches back and snags her hand again, pulling her closer to follow in the rat's tiny footsteps. "The rats know all the access points; the kids who hunt the rats enlarged some of those access points so they could get through, too."

They don't need to go far; he points out a lighter spot in the darkness near the floor, only a couple of feet from the rock fall. "There. Our way out."

"It's not a very big way out."

"Too small for a Terminator."

"There is that." Allison drops to her hands and knees and peers through the hole in the wall. There's something under her left hand that she tells herself is just rubble, but she's sure it's dried rat droppings; she scrapes her hand against the edge of the opening, just in case. There's weak light at the other end and she smells dust and something like burning rubber, not very strong. With a quick glance back at Kyle, she pushes on into the opening, kind of a tunnel within a tunnel, angled upward.

The mini-tunnel is rough, the pitted surface catching at her hair and clothing when she isn't careful, but it never becomes so narrow that she has to make a real effort to get through. She judges that she's gone up maybe twenty feet and out another three or four when she reaches what used to be a basement, probably of an old apartment building. There are rows of what must be old washing machines; the ones closest to her have been stripped of usable parts, she guesses they all have.

Broken windows along the top of the wall on one side allow light to filter in; Allison climbs up onto a table that's shoved up against the wall and cautiously looks out. Beyond is a debris-strewn and broken blacktop road, several long-abandoned vehicles, and a brick building, partially destroyed, across the street. It's dark and still outside, but the moon is full and right overhead, throwing enough light that she can see piles of bricks scattered alongside the wall on the blacktop. The moon even gives enough light that the room she's in seems bright in comparison to the tunnels below.

Behind her, she hears Kyle as he comes through the tunnel; his rifle clatters against the sides and he bites off a curse.

Allison jumps down from her perch to take the weapon from him, offering him her hand to help pull him from the hole in the wall. "So what do we do now?"

"We wait."

Allison rolls her eyes. "Well aren't you a font of information? What are we waiting for?"

"My brother," he says as he takes of his knit hat. He jumps up onto another table below the windows and pushes the hat out past the dirty and broken glass of the window there. Watching him, Allison slides down next to the tunnel opening to sit with her back against the wall; she lays Kyle's rifle on the floor within easy reach. "He should be here before dawn, if Sayles got the others back to base okay," he says as he steps down, sans hat.

"That's a big 'if,'" she observes as he sits beside her. "What if that 600 wasn't the only one?"

He looks over at her. "It wasn't. One of the kids took another one out right after we hooked back up. Far as we could tell, there were just the two of them, though."

"Well the other half of 'just the two of them' is still out there."

"We'll deal with it if we have to."

Allison leans her head back against the wall and closes her eyes. She's tired and wants to go home, or what passes for home, wants to sleep. A dim memory from when she was a little girl tickles her brain: her momma's arms around her as she carried her to her bed; momma had tucked her in beneath warm, fluffy blankets and kissed her on the forehead, wishing her sweet dreams. Beside her, Kyle shifts, reminding her of his presence, pulling her from the pleasant memory and back into harsh reality.

"Thanks for coming back for me," she murmurs, wanting to tell him now, before she has a chance to forget. He doesn't say anything and she tilts her head up so she can see him better. He's looking down at her, his gaze so intent that she finds herself wondering if she missed something, some obvious reason that of course he came back for her.

But then Kyle leans down, brushes his mouth against hers, and she finds herself stretching up to meet him. His lips are soft, warm; gone, as he abruptly pulls back. He opens his mouth, probably to apologize, but Allison doesn't want to hear it. She reaches up, presses closer into his side, pulls his head back down and kisses him again.

He doesn't pull away this time; instead, he opens his mouth against hers and Allison doesn't let the opportunity go to waste. She licks into his mouth, tasting stale coffee and the faint hint of peanuts. She lightly strokes the back of his neck with the tips of her fingers, and then more firmly with the palm of her hand when he tangles his fingers in her hair, when he deepens the kiss.

She loses herself in him, for just a little while, the taste of him, the feel of him, but then from the row of windows across the room, a bright light finds them, there and then not, and they break apart. Allison reaches for the rifle, closer to her than to Kyle. They both surge to their feet, run to flatten themselves against the wall at either end of the row of tables, trying to make themselves less of a target.

Kyle's hat drops down from above, lands on the corner of a table. "Four. Nineteen. Eleven." A man's voice and silhouette, just outside: Kyle's brother, Derek.

Across the room, Kyle grins at her and says, "Four. Twenty-one. Twenty eleven." The code and response General Ellison had set just that morning, a million years ago; just numbers, but they must mean something to the General. Kyle retrieves his hat just as a booted foot kicks the remaining glass from one of the window frames. He surprises Allison by pulling the hat down onto her head, rather than his own.

"I'll want that back," he whispers into her ear before turning back toward the window.

Allison can't stop herself from smiling.


End file.
